The WOLFBANE Cycle: Werewolves, Prostitutes, and Fortune Tellers

Here’s another theatrical effort of mine that I’d like to share with y0u, gentle reader. It’s called “The Wolfbane Cycle”, and consists of three short plays, meant to be performed in the same evening.

The first play, “WOLFBANE” was produced in Chicago by the Organic Theatre (see review below) and concerns a man who goes to a prostitute, and claims to be a werewolf. He offers to give her all the money he has in the world, if she will show him the “humanly love” that he has never known. The drawback of course, is that if his plan does not work, he will turn into a werewolf and slay her. Here DESTINY (the prostitute) and LARRY (the werewolf) discuss their situation in heightened language befitting their mythic, archtypical nature:

DESTINY

Fuck the money. I can get money. I can get it with my eyes closed. (Pause) I want to keep my eyes open. (Pause) You got to at least get over here. Next to me. And then you got to forget everything you thought was true. Then throw yourself into the flame. All the heat will burn you clean. Just touch me. Wherever you want. Hey. Look in my eyes. This is a thing that takes both of us. I can’t do it by myself, and neither can you. The door is locked. We got all night. I’m yours.

LARRY

I would forget about you, if it were possible. I would erase every movement, every impulse that brought us to this impossible pass. I’d run for the door, run for the darkness with all my might, and never let your scent inflame my mind again. But it is not possible for me to do this. Something inside me is riveted. Something is hooked in a way I can never tear loose of. And whatever the outcome, whatever anguish and torment await, whatever fields of fire list before me, I am pulled and compelled far beyond my own undoing. Like the women I have bloodied, torn, who have come into my jaws as lovers, now I too must surrender to a thrall, kneel before a need greater than any I have yet encountered. I could not bear it if I killed you. I can not bear to let my human heart decay, untouched. I can not afford to feel again, if I must only feel pain. I cannot continue as I am one second longer. For I am drawn to you by a force far greater than that which wracks my ever-changing frame. You are locked somewhere within my battered soul, and I recall your flesh from lifetimes ago. Our paths are stitched together in a fearsome way. (Pause.) Goddamn your gentle, tender form! Your careless grace! Goddamn my wretched isolation! Damn every creature crawling on this rock!

(Larry brutally tears off his shirt.)

For God forgive me, I shall commit to this enterprise of loving you, though I know the torments of hell gleefully await. But I give myself unto you, as you must place your very life within the boundless grasp of my desire. To think we had a choice would be pure folly.

DESTINY

I’ve been drowning in small talk all these years!

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The second play in the cycle, called “PURE AT HEART” concerns a fifteen year-old runaway (LUKE), who comes to a fortune teller (DOREEN) late one rainy night. As the play progresses, and secrets are revealed, we realize that the young man has a touch of the untamed beast inside himself.. .

DOREEN

I never look at the moon anymore. I don’t even look in the sky at

night. I never come around a corner, and stand breathless in it’s

light. That was another life. Not this one, but another that I had

somehow, and somehow I lost it.

Luke pulls away, goes to the window.

LUKE

The moon changes everything. The night has been forgiven. Pale light washes the scraps of my unhappy past away. I let go my broken heart, and everything I failed to do. I didn’t do a thing. I didn’t touch a soul. Not including in my dreams. (Pause) I did not beg to be born. I was not given a choice. I was given an impossible life. I was born ruined. I was born torn in two. (Pause) You are human. I pity you. You are bound in isolation. You are swallowed by your sins. Your sins are now upon you. Moonlight makes them solid. Brightness defines them. I am defined by falling light. You made me. You began me. You threw me. Hurled me into the air. You flung me. You denied me. I’m still falling. I’m still suspended in a colorless sky. The river’s a vast and glassy expanse. Time has come full circle. Your past is here to stay. I am your sin in the flesh. Your passion blossoms in my heat. I am your ecstasy. I am your fall from grace. I will not die for your sins. You will die for mine. (Pause) It’s inside me. It’s who I am. I can not hang forever. I am flesh. I will fall. My life is a dream of falling. There is a bright river below me. A river of blood into which I must plunge. Death will not come for me. I am death. I was created to destroy. I will tear flesh with my teeth, and rend the organs of innocents asunder. I will chew up the night, and spit out the stars! I will tear the moon out of the sky!

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The final play in the cycle is called “PRAYERS BY NIGHT” and takes place at a rural hospice on a snowy night. This play is in the process of being written, even as we speak, and if the third act of “MANIAC LAKE” is any indication, I would just say one thing: Keep your hopes up for a smashing finale, but clearly, don’t hold your breath!

And by all means, watch this space, as I will post updates as they come in….